Supporting Youth with Serious Emotional Disturbance: Family Systems, Treatment Planning, and Care Coordination

A live webinar link and access details are sent by email after you register. Attendance for the full session is required to earn your 3 live CE hours.

Your Presenter

Olivia Williams, PhD, LPCA

Developmental Psychologist / Licensed Professional Counselor Associate

Olivia Williams is a developmental psychologist and licensed professional counselor associate specializing in ADHD, anxiety, and child and adolescent mental health. Her sessions draw on CBT, family systems, and solution-focused approaches to bridge research and clinical practice. In this live webinar, Olivia shows clinicians how to support youth with serious emotional disturbance through family systems work, practical treatment planning, and coordinated care across home, school, and community, alongside the case discussion and Q&A that only a live format allows.

Why Attend This Webinar Live?

Supporting a young person with serious emotional disturbance rarely means working with the child alone. Real progress usually depends on the family system and on coordinating with parents, teachers, pediatricians, case managers, and community providers, and that coordination gets messy fast. Attending live gives you something a self-paced course cannot: the ability to ask questions in the moment, work through tangled multi-system cases in real time, and learn from the questions your peers raise.

Understanding the Scope: Serious Emotional Disturbance in Youth

Serious emotional disturbance (SED) describes a mental, emotional, or behavioral condition that substantially interferes with a young person's functioning at home, at school, or in the community. Understanding how common these needs are, and how often care goes uncoordinated, helps clinicians see why family systems work and cross-system collaboration are core clinical skills rather than administrative extras.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a large share of children and adolescents experience mental, emotional, or behavioral concerns, yet many never connect with consistent care. Youth who meet criteria for serious emotional disturbance typically have needs that show up in more than one setting at once, which is exactly where fragmented, single-setting services break down. Research indicates that when children do receive services, schools are one of the most common points of access, making strong partnerships between clinicians, families, and educators essential. Studies of wraparound and systems-of-care approaches show that coordinated, family-driven planning is associated with better engagement and more stable outcomes for youth with SED. These realities underscore why clinicians who work with this population need family systems skills, structured treatment planning, and cross-system care coordination.

Live Youth SED Webinar Overview

This live continuing education webinar was developed in 2025 for mental health professionals and is delivered in real time by Olivia Williams, PhD, LPCA. Youth with serious emotional disturbance rarely present their needs in a single setting, and effective care often depends on how well clinicians can work with the family system while connecting the home, the school, and the surrounding community. This 3-hour live webinar provides licensed professional counselors, social workers, marriage and family therapists, psychologists, and addiction counselors with practical strategies for family systems work, treatment planning, and care coordination with this population.

The webinar begins by defining serious emotional disturbance and mapping the systems that surround the young person, using an ecological, family-driven lens to understand how home, school, and community influences interact. Participants learn how to identify the key people in each setting, clarify shared goals, and recognize where systems are pulling in different directions. Special attention is given to the family system itself: patterns, roles, and strengths that shape the youth's functioning, and keeping the family's voice and priorities at the center of the plan rather than allowing any single system to dominate.

From there, the training focuses on the practical work of treatment planning and coordination: building an individualized, strengths-based treatment plan, assembling a wraparound-style team, running effective cross-system meetings, managing consent and information sharing, and following up so that plans do not fall apart between settings. Because it is delivered live, you can raise your own cases and hear the presenter reason through them alongside you, which is where the nuance of working with youth with SED becomes clear.

Who Should Attend This Live Webinar?

This live webinar is designed for licensed mental health professionals across all disciplines and experience levels who work with children, adolescents, and families, including youth with serious emotional disturbance, in private practice, community mental health, schools, agencies, and other settings where care crosses multiple systems.

Live Webinar Learning Objectives

Upon completing this live webinar on supporting youth with serious emotional disturbance, mental health professionals will be able to:

• Define serious emotional disturbance (SED) and describe how home, school, and community systems interact to shape a young person's functioning, using an ecological and family-driven framework
• Identify the key stakeholders in each system and clarify their roles, priorities, and points of potential conflict
• Apply family systems concepts and the core principles of wraparound and systems-of-care approaches to real clinical cases involving youth with SED
• Develop an individualized, strengths-based treatment plan and a coordinated, family-centered team that keeps the youth and family voice at the center of planning
• Facilitate effective cross-system meetings that produce a shared plan with clear roles and follow-up
• Navigate consent, confidentiality, and information sharing across settings in an ethical and legally sound manner
• Collaborate effectively with schools, including participating constructively in school-based support and planning processes
• Connect families to appropriate community resources and coordinate warm handoffs between providers
• Monitor progress across systems and adjust the plan when settings pull in different directions
• Recognize equity, access, and cultural factors that affect how families experience each system

What This Live Webinar Covers

How the Live Webinar Works

The Wraparound Process: Coordinating Care Across Home, School, and Community

Wraparound is a structured, team-based process for organizing individualized, family-driven support around a child with complex needs. Rather than referring a family out to a series of disconnected services, wraparound builds a single coordinated plan that spans home, school, and community. This live webinar walks through each phase and gives you the chance to ask how to apply it with your own cases.

Live Youth SED Webinar CE Approvals

This live webinar on supporting youth with serious emotional disturbance is approved for continuing education credit by the following national and state organizations. Our approvals ensure that mental health professionals can earn live CE credit accepted by their licensing boards.

Live Youth SED Webinar: Frequently Asked Questions

See the Full Live CE Schedule

This webinar is one of 24 live CE sessions we are offering throughout the year, covering ethics, telehealth, trauma, family systems, clinical supervision, and more. Browse the full schedule to plan your live CE, or get every session included with Unlimited Plus.